


make believe it's hyper real, but i live in a hologram with you.

by HelenaMcCord



Category: Ancient Greek Religion & Lore, Circe - Madeline Miller
Genre: Angst and Feels, Canon Divergence, Character Study, Drabble, F/M, POV First Person, Relationship Study, They deserved better, everyone but circe nd dadalus r mentioned only, nothing set is happening its more j her fantasies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-07
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-12 21:22:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29890740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HelenaMcCord/pseuds/HelenaMcCord
Summary: title from buzzcut season by lorde.i know by the end of circe, we were meant to be all over telemachus and circe and then odysseus and circe, but circe spent the rest of the book constantly reflecting back on daedalus and they loved each other CLEARLY so here we are. also,, more circe fanfiction!! please!!
Relationships: Circe/Daedalus (Circe), Circe/Odysseus (Circe), Circe/Telemachus (Circe)
Kudos: 2





	make believe it's hyper real, but i live in a hologram with you.

**Author's Note:**

> title from buzzcut season by lorde.
> 
> i know by the end of circe, we were meant to be all over telemachus and circe and then odysseus and circe, but circe spent the rest of the book constantly reflecting back on daedalus and they loved each other CLEARLY so here we are. also,, more circe fanfiction!! please!!

I find myself in a constant state of yearning to see those little white lines that painted his skin, cradle them with my lips and stroke them with my fingertips while he recounts the stories of how they were given to him with a tone that either read in pride or shame or even an old fear. I want to see him laid bare before me in my bed of golden sheets and thrown pillows, his body beneath mine with my hips against his, but no lust growing between. Only something one might have associated with love if that was what was available. With him beneath me again, I would run my fingers down his body to find the white lines and kiss them fondly as if thanking him for all he had done even if he had never graced me as such. My lips had never been alluring to anyone, had not been seen as soft and elegant to anyone for I did not inherit the beauty of my mother. But he looked past that and let me kiss his scars. Each time my kiss connected with the faded wound, there was a soft pang of what mortals might have called pain in the palm of my hand where I had cut myself so many years ago to catch a glimpse of what my blood might have looked like. Red. Much like his, but never golden as my divinity might have craved.

  
  


_ “Daedalus,”  _ I might have called in my thin voice to the air between us, reflecting my gaze from the expanse of his chest to his clear eyes seeing right through me in a way that felt refreshing like the first splash of my grandfather’s waters on my skin. How I longed to feel that gaze on me once more. There were only poor substitutes in the years that followed and Hermes never quite let me forget how much I craved. I craved and I craved and I craved and there was nothing but a memory. His skin, a beautiful pale bronze that shone much like Father in his obsidian halls, tasted like salt and dust on my tongue and never had the two tasted better in my mouth. His hand would rise to the curve of my waist and the feeling of risen skin on his hands would rub on mine. Bliss, I would say, and it was. I suppose my infatuation with his scars came from the part of me that envied that he may bear such marks. I would only heal. The cut on my hand had faded moments after it had been gained and my fingers replaced themselves after the Minotaur had consumed them and any cut or scratch I gained playing with my lion or casting my spells faded away with my divinity washing over it. Pain was foreign for a goddess like myself, but Daedalus saw pain like an old mistress coming back again and again.

  
  


His hands were rough and warm and calloused with scars littering them and they felt like twisted euphoria as they rubbed on my smooth and empty skin. I held no blemishes or scars or even freckles on my skin as even the sun could never touch me. He was like a painting crafted by the gods and presented to me to represent the deepest parts of my envy. He was a mockery held before me, but my heart still reached for him. In my bed on Aiaia, he would have no more worries of pain. She would leave him and there would only be me and my grace and my many spells to heal him of all worries. Pain would no longer be his consort, only the touch of a pharmakis melded with the love of a goddess. What could mean more? His touch would be filled with adoration, somehow finding the spots I had wounded myself even if they left no mark and stroking them with as much care as I did his. He made me think of Prometheus often, how he saw me for myself and not a failed daughter of Helios, how he saw a kind woman rather than a ruthless goddess of sorcery. 

  
  


Nothing would make my exile more bearable.  _ “Please, Hermes, ask Zeus to let me have him. I ask only this of you,”  _ I would plead at his feet for just another hour with Daedalus. I had been a fool to board my ship without so much as a second thought. His death struck me deep inside, becoming another thorn in the mangled briar bush that became my feelings over the thousands of years I had lived. Stifling my feelings from the day I was born, I could only shove my grief away. Mortals felt grief, goddesses felt nothing. Instead, I felt his touch burned into my skin like a memory my body refused to let go. I felt the raised skin of his scars, the calluses of his hands from how long he worked on each new invention, the heat of his body that felt so welcoming that I melted. I felt his face tucked into my neck where my unruly hair would rest at night, his lips pressing on the pale column in the night before he left so Icarus wouldn’t wake alone. We were something temporary yet so fixed that leaving felt like whatever real pain might have been for someone of my kind. I’m sure that was part of why Pasipha ë sent me away as she did, always one to drink my misery like the sweetest of nectars.

  
  


I spent fleeting moments considering a life where I might have been promised to him as my siblings were to their spouses or kingdoms. My brothers ruled countries with beautiful wives and copious children while my sister held Crete pressed under her thumb and her husband at her whims while her children ran free with chains clinking at their feet without a clue in the world that was what they are. I imagined, with my lion curled at the foot of my bed and the early spring rains pouring outside of my home, in the privacy of my bedroom what a life with Daedalus might have been. The unbecoming daughter of Helios and Perse,  _ Hawk,  _ promised to the craftsman that wasn’t a god or even a demigod, but an average mortal with skill that could  _ rival _ a god. The best match Helios could make for me, I decided in the fantasy I held close. Our marriage would be nothing like that of my siblings’. We would have that loosely permitted love between us and all of Aiaia to ourselves with whatever sons and daughters I bore him. Those scars would become something for us to look at fondly as a testament to our false reality for even in my own mind I could not be permitted a happy ending.

  
  


The Fates would never allow me as such.

  
  


He might ask one day as we lay entwined,  _ “Why, beautiful goddess, do you lay with someone as scarred as me when you could have a man made over if you willed it?”  _ The question would be satire, of course, but I was always an honest woman if I could help it. I’d give him a soft look with a smile twitching at the corner of my lips.  _ “Your scars are you. When I feel them, I feel you. Why would I want someone blank with nothing to know of them when I could know you?”  _ He would have smiled, kissed the crown of my head and muttered sweet nothings in my ear. I wanted to know him from a crowd of people by just those little white lines littering his body like washed-up shells on my yellow shores. I had always been fond of broken things. He would be broken, and openly so within my -  _ our  _ bed, and I would be the one to mend him as he would mend me with the scars no one could see but me. My little white lines could not be seen from the outside on my skin, but rather on the inside painted across my forever beating heart and no one understood that better than him.

  
  


Odysseus had been charming. I admit, I felt myself falling in love with him in the months he stayed on my shores and the nights he stayed in my bed with whispers of his battles and home of Ithaca on his tongue, but he would never look at me how Daedalus had during our trysts while I stayed in Crete. He spoke of his son, yes, but never with such fondness as Daedalus had spoken of Icarus. And I had not seen Telemachus then, had not seen the warmth of which he spoke, but I saw Icarus and my heart swelled. Odysseus had scars, but none were as fond as those Daedalus carried with him. When Odysseus spoke of his own marks, he had a sinful pride in his tone that once drew me in, but after so long made bile rise in my throat. Daedalus had accepted the marks for what they were and let me love them anyway. I wanted to love them once more with him in my bed as I dreamed.

  
  


I wanted to straddle his hips, my fingers sliding across the skin of his arms and chest to find each line, kiss them and mutter,  _ “You are healed, mortal,”  _ with each touch and watch how they would not fade but see how his eyes would flicker with something that spoke all the words he could not. I wanted to have a reality rather than a dream that faded with the first glimpse of daylight through my window each morning. I did not need to sleep. Sleep was for mortals and some of the lesser nymphs, but I slept each night just to see his face again. I remember how he looked sleeping beside me for those precious hours before his departure. His face would go slack and his arm would curl almost possessively around my waist, the heat of his body would calm me in my rest and he would be none the wiser. When he woke up just before break of day to retreat home, his voice would be throaty and deeper with sleep. He would press a kiss to my lips, so briefly I thought I must have imagined it, and muttered his goodbyes before slinking out of the door and into the shadows. I found it endearing.

  
  


When I returned to Aiaia and found myself curled up in my bed with my lion once more, I felt a tightness in my chest I had not felt since I arrived all that time ago, Loneliness. I thought of him and his scars, how I longed to see them and feel them again, I thought of his sweet devotion and his charming little boy that made me long for my own. The loom he crafted for me sat by my hearth and each time I used it, I let my fantasies run rampant through my mind once more. He would come up behind me, lean against my back and kiss my temple before muttering about my skill, how anything I might have made would become his favourite and I would have laughed, carrying on with my work. Something for Icarus, surely, to keep him warm at night or to simply show my gratitude. A loom of Daedalus was a loom to be loved and loved it was. I allowed Penelope to use it when she and Telemachus accompanied Telegonus back, but a distant part of me wanted to keep it all to myself as it was meant to be. They would not have understood. I’m not sure even I did.

  
  


In quiet moments, I like to think that perhaps in another life Daedalus and I are together and happy with his son and sons of our own, counting the lines that cross his skin and possibly even mine with smiles on our faces. Maybe somewhere else I had been permitted such joy.

  
  


And that was enough.


End file.
